What planet are these ‘feminists’ living on?
At least Kate does not pretend to be like other mums
KATE Middleton has admitted that she finds motherhood tough going at times, even though she has a lot of help.
Fair dues to Kate for honestly in owning up to her army of staff.
At least she’s not pretending to be a superwoman, single-handedly running the show while her other half enjoys his lads’ weekends in Verbier.
AS A lifelong feminist, it pains me to say that I’d rather be sucked into a black-hole vortex than attend the Planet Woman conference on Friday. Now don’t get me wrong, normally I’m a sucker for an all-woman bash but the likes of Norah Casey, PayPal’s Louise Phelan and Frances Fitzgerald strike me as the sort to crush underfoot anyone who gets in the way of the onward march of their stiletto heels.
I also have a sneaking suspicion that some of these high achievers could have a tendency to exploit the campaign for female advancement to promote themselves rather than the other way around.
But perhaps that’s not fair given how so many of the 500 women who flocked to the RDS were impressed by the ‘inspirational’ stories of ‘empowerment’.
The audience also found a determined role model in the Justice Minister, who used the occasion to brazenly reiterate her designs on the Fine Gael leadership and ultimately the job of taoiseach.
Yes that’s right – on Planet Woman alas, all ambition is lauded, no matter how undesirable or unrealistic.
PERHAPS it was the atmosphere of uncritical female solidarity that gave Fitzgerald the nerve to ignore the latest Garda controversy, thereby suggesting all was hunky dory on her watch in the world of law and policing.
So much for all her conference guff about ‘women bringing something different’ to the table.
She showed the same vanity as most politicians in pursuit of their own self-interest and a lack focus on the work she has yet to do, reforming the dysfunctional police force.
The scandal of exaggerated breath test numbers and of the 14,700 traffic offence errors, all of which will have to go to court at a considerable cost to the taxpayer, has led to renewed calls for the Garda commissioner’s resignation.
They reflect as poorly on the minister as her dilution of the legal services bill. Yet that went unmentioned at Planet Woman.
Its organisers looked too busy cosying up to the power brokers in our shambolic State to ask awkward questions.
They showed complacency inviting Tony O’Brien of the HSE to the conference, for the twee reason that his organisation employs the most women in Ireland.
The previous day, O’Brien attended an Oireachtas committee where he contradicted his earlier accounts of HSE conduct in the disgraceful treatment of Grace, the profoundly disabled girl who spent two decades with a sexually abusive foster family.
O’Brien has power but like the Garda commissioner, his authority is slowly being washed up on the shores of revelation.
Surely a better way of exploring women in the HSE would be hearing from the overworked and underpaid nurses who have left the service or the overworked and not quite-so-underpaid consultants who work at its coalface, rather than from its top bureaucrat?
UNDER the increasing scrutiny of external audits and the public accounts committee, the institutions of state from the HSE to the gardaí seem rotten to the core, totally unaccountable and beset by scandals. Only a few weeks ago the country’s leader told a fabricated story concerning whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe in public.
Fitzgerald has had a ringside seat to these upheavals but it seems that all Planet Woman wants to hear is her spouting about how politics is too important to be left to men.
Given the Tánaiste’s aloof attitude towards the myriad problems in her own department, it may also be the case that politics is also too much for women.